Recession keeping immigrants home, Mexican census shows

Census numbers from the National Institute of Statistics and Geography, Mexico census agency, are mirroring those from the U.S. Census Bureau. Both say the recession is keeping immigrants home. A New York Times story reports 25 percent, or “about 226,000 fewer people traveled from Mexico to other countries during the year that ended in August 2008 than during the previous year.”

In a better labor market, they would have risked entering the county illegally, experts say. “If jobs are available, people come,” said Jeffrey S. Passel of the Pew Hispanic Center. “If jobs are not available, people don’t come.”

Pew says 11 million undocumented Mexican immigrants (others estimate it’s closer to 12 million) remain in the United States. Pew also says Mexicans make up 32 percent of immigrants in the United States, half have no documents.

“Despite collapsing job markets in construction and other low-wage work,” the story reports, “there has been no exodus among Mexicans living in the United States, the Mexican census figures show. About the same number of migrants, 450,000, returned to Mexico in 2008 as in 2007,” the story says.

Immigration policy analysts disagree on whether the Bush administration’s tougher stance on immigration, which included workplace raids, had a major impact on immigration. More right-leaning analysts credit the hard line. Those more to the left say the U.S. recession had the most impact on the migration change.